The scale of Thursday’s hedging is now on record. The US options market had its busiest day ever on November 5 as stocks slumped, with volumes rising 53 percent above the average level in October to more than 112 million contracts, according to clearing data reported by Bloomberg, and just over half of the volume in puts. Henry Schwartz, vice president of market intelligence at Cboe Global Markets, put market wide volume at 110 million contracts, with records of 8.3 million S and P 500 index options contracts and 579,000 mini SPX contracts, and 17.04 million individual executions, about 2 million above the previous record.
The composition shows where the demand sat. Zero days to expiration options accounted for 58.6 percent of SPX volume, which means the protection bought on Thursday was overwhelmingly same day insurance rather than a repricing of longer dated risk. The cost of that insurance moved accordingly: the Cboe Volatility Index rose the most since April 2025 as the S and P 500 fell 4.4 percent and the Nasdaq 100 slid more than 6 percent, and the cost of VIX options rose faster than at any time since the 2018 Volmageddon episode.
For rates readers, the point is transmission. A market that hedges this heavily in one day options is a market whose positioning can unwind as fast as it was put on, and Thursday’s flows sat on top of a week in which Treasury yields first rallied on haven demand and then backed up on the payrolls beat. None of the record volume changes the December policy question, but it marks the week’s selloff as a positioning event as much as a repricing, which is why Friday’s partial recovery in equities came with credit and volatility still unsettled.